As we in the land component commands increasingly recognize the
value of thinking jointly and prepare to be better partners with our
fellow components, we find ourselves facing a training dilemma: ground
combat training rigor versus the situational realism of the joint fight.
Stated another way, good joint training rigor tends to limit the level
of intensity for ground combat. If we fight the "joint fight"
well, we shape the environment so that ground combat is minimized or
even precluded, friendly ground forces are free to maneuver extensively,
and these forces are not seriously threatened with penetration or
annihilation by opposing ground forces.

This is not simply a Service-centric problem. Ultimately, this
training dilemma derives from the way our nation has chosen to wage its
conflicts. Because we value the lives of our citizens so highly, we are
loath to put them in jeopardy. This is particularly true in cases where
our national interests may be at stake, but our national survival is
not. In economic terms, we have chosen to employ a capital-intensive
rather than a labor-intensive approach to conflict. We have been willing
to make huge investments in extraordinarily capable ships and aircraft
in order to minimize or preclude what Carl von Clausewitz referred to as
the "cash payment" of the decision by combat--especially
ground combat. (1)

While our ground combat forces possess enormous strength and
significant standoff advantages through the use of technology, their use
places a large number of troops at risk. We have deliberately chosen to
place more of our technology-enabled capital at risk, and less of our
human capital; we are much more willing to spend money and expend
machines than to expend lives.

Put into a campaign perspective, this means that we have a fairly
standardized sequence of priorities that we want to accomplish during a
crisis leading to a conflict and then during the conflict itself. First,
we want to ensure that we have freedom of action in order to project
forces and ensure the continuity of their logistical support. This means
establishing air and maritime superiority in the area of operations and
along the lines of communication (LOC) that extend from our power
projection bases to the area of operations. Such freedom of navigation
is essential for projecting and deploying any type of combat power,
including ground combat power. Establishing local air superiority is a
critical precursor to employing ground forces, and we certainly strive
to achieve air supremacy. We are unwilling to risk having precious
ground forces destroyed by enemy aircraft or tactical ballistic
missiles.

Lessons from U.S. History

We need look only as far as our own history to see how true the
above assertions are and why. The turning point in the joint campaign to
capture Guadalcanal, for instance, occurred when the Navy interdicted
the Tokyo Express in November 1942, as it was attempting to deliver the
bulk of the Japanese 38th Infantry Division to the island. Of the 10,000
Japanese troops destined for Guadalcanal, only 4,000 arrived, and the
Japanese never again attempted a similar reinforcement operation. How
much difference did this maritime interdiction make to the beleaguered U.S. ground forces? It is hard to say, but this engagement occurred
almost exactly halfway through the extended series of ground battles to
secure Guadalcanal. Japanese troop strength had steadily increased until
the destruction of the Tokyo Express, peaking at 30,000 in November. In
December, it dropped to 25,000. Without fresh troops and effective
resupply, Japanese capability to mount a counterattack dwindled, and the
tactical initiative shifted to the Americans, enabling a string of
hard-fought but successful ground battles, gaining momentum until the
island was declared secure in late February 1943. (2)

We have been uncontested during real conflict at sea since World
War II. Just the same, because the Soviet Union was perceived as such a
serious threat during the Cold War, we invested enormous talent and
treasure to ensure that we could prevail in any conflict, especially
that we could maintain freedom of navigation across the North Atlantic
through the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom gap in the event of a
conflict in Europe. Local threats to freedom of movement, through the
Straits of Hormuz or in the Gulf of Sidra, for example, have been taken
seriously and dealt with successfully without major sea battles.
Consequently, during major conflicts, our maritime forces have been
employed primarily to augment and support domination of the air and
ground battles. This was true during the Korean War, Vietnam, Operations
Desert Shield and Desert Storm, the Balkan conflicts, and Operations
Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom.

The same is true, although perhaps less so, when we consider
airpower. Superiority in the air is a prerequisite for freedom of
navigation, security of LOC, and the deployment or employment of ground
forces. We need air superiority not only to protect our freedom of
movement but also to conduct offensive air operations that shape the
battle environment and protect our ground forces--close air support, air
interdiction, and a strategic air campaign. One of the differences
between the maritime and air environments is that we are more likely to
find a challenging air environment than a challenging maritime
environment. Since the United States has no peer in the maritime
environment, an adversary would be unable to challenge U.S. forces
there, except in a relatively small locale, and then only for a short
time.

The situation is not quite as rosy in the air environment. Many
nations, among them potential adversaries, have chosen to invest heavily
in their air components and air defense forces. With these forces, they
are able to establish at least parity over their sovereign territory and
may have the capability to extend an umbrella of superiority in the
region beyond their borders, including maritime areas. Consequently, to
maintain freedom of movement, reduction or elimination of the air threat
is a high priority, even with secure strategic LOC from power projection
bases. We secure the sea and air first and then launch ground
operations.

This style of warfare has allowed us to prevail, using our
technological advantage to enable maneuver of forces and massing of
fires without necessarily massing our most prized resource--personnel.
Our ability to establish superiority, even supremacy, over enemy air and
maritime forces means that we are able to interdict those forces not
only as they deploy through the air and maritime environments, but also,
almost at will, as they attempt to move or maneuver on the ground. We
use these advantages to shape the ground environment in our favor,
attempting to ensure that our ground forces do not have to cope with an
enemy force that could overwhelm them through sheer mass.

We also enable our forces to maneuver effectively, avoiding enemy
strengths and focusing on enemy weaknesses. Desert Storm was a superb
example of this type of campaign at work. A relatively well-equipped
enemy was first blinded through destruction of its air component, and
then completely deceived by operational maneuver on an unprecedented
scale. With air supremacy, we were able to maneuver ground forces
without fear of air interdiction, or even of detection by means of
aerial reconnaissance during the critical pre-ground offensive
operational movement of the XVIII and VII Corps to the west, while
inflicting overwhelming casualties on enemy ground forces through air
interdiction. (3)

The Dilemma of Success

Phenomenal success has created a training dilemma. We still want
our ground forces to experience the rigor of engaging a competent
near-peer ground force in a high-intensity environment. We have done so
in the past by creating training experiences largely devoid of the
synergistic contributions of the other Services. The Combat Training
Center (CTC) experience and the Battle Command Training Program (BCTP)
"Warfighter" experience have been superb for supplying
rigorous, high-stress training for ground combat, but until recently,
they have been relatively devoid of joint context. Even now, providing a
joint context in the "dirt" CTC and "virtual" BCTP
training environments is focused primarily on tasks supporting the
tactical level, providing nonorganic intelligence, surveillance, and
reconnaissance support, fire support, or logistics. (4)

Participants in CTC training perceive a joint environment, but the
joint context is shaped to provide an awareness of other Services, not
an appreciation for capabilities that can furnish operational level
shaping of the battlespace. This is not a criticism of the tactical
focus of CTC; it is merely an observation of a limitation imposed by
that focus. Part of the Army's Title 10 responsibility is to
provide trained, equipped, and ready forces to combatant commanders.
Tactical proficiency is paramount, so we have learned how to develop and
maintain superb tactical proficiency.

Excessive focus on the contributions of other Services at the
tactical level of ground combat causes us to overlook or ignore the
operational level contributions they make through the prosecution of
their own tactical level engagements in their respective environments.
Maritime interdiction of a sea LOC and air interdiction of deploying
ground forces, for example, are tactical missions for the respective
Services, but they have operational level impact on the campaign.

As ground component forces, we have trained well to succeed at the
tactical level of combat. We can congratulate ourselves for becoming the
best in the world at what we do. But we must temper that pride with
recognition of two significant facts: the contributions of our comrades
in arms in the other Services have enabled success through their
contributions to the campaign; and we need to be able to think
operationally as well as tactically in order to get the most out of the
capabilities of the other Services. Tactical level mastery at any level,
from fire team to field army, is a perishable skill. We must retain our
level of excellence in the ground combat environment by sustaining
rigorous training. But we must not rest on our laurels, because we have
learned the hard way that tactical level success can be extraordinarily
expensive and that tactical success on the ground does not necessarily
translate into operational or strategic level victory.

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Training at the Operational Level

If the Army and Marine Corps are to fulfill roles at the
operational level in the joint tactical/operational/strategic framework,
we need to develop an ability to think and plan at the operational
level. That includes an ability to shift focus from the ground tactical
fight to the joint multicomponent fight. This ability seems a simple
thing, but it has proven extraordinarily difficult, and that is not
unique to the Army. Each Service has a tendency to see the universe from
its own habitual perspective. For the ground components (and this is
especially true of their staffs), there is a tendency to focus on the
close fight, while ignoring the value or even the possibility of air or
sea interdiction of deploying forces or lines of communication. Air and
maritime component personnel show the same characteristic: a tendency to
seek elimination of all risk from an enemy operating in their respective
domains before they are inclined to provide resources to support other
components' fights. This is not necessarily a matter of Service
parochialism; it is a predictable consequence of the way we concentrate
on our own tactical domains within each Service in our respective
professional development processes of training, experience, and
self-study.

A single exercise cannot adequately meet the desired training
objectives of all the training stakeholders. Conflicting requirements
from the various Services weigh against the design of an exercise that
can be all things to all components. Meeting the needs of the land
component is particularly difficult if the air and maritime components
are exercised well and employed effectively. This becomes a strong
argument against embedding a warfighter exercise (WFX) in a joint
training exercise, which may appear to be cost efficient from a training
dollar perspective but competes with training effectiveness.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

For example, for an Army corps (or a Marine expeditionary force,
for that matter) acting as a joint task force (JTF) headquarters, the
first priority must be to fight the joint fight--that is, to take
advantage of the synergy available from synchronized, coordinated
employment of capabilities from all the Services. If they fight the
joint fight well, they are unlikely to face the ground combat intensity
that characterizes WFX rigor. Only if they fail to perform their JTF
headquarters role well will they experience WFX-style rigor in the
ground fight. To achieve that level of intensity in the ground fight
would require restraining the success of the air and maritime components
by constraining their actions to limit effectiveness or overwhelming
them with a superior opposing force. Both of these options (constraining
and overwhelming) require a highly contrived scenario--entirely
possible, but not necessarily good training.

There are exceptions. Embedding a lower level exercise--a brigade
or division WFX, for example--within a joint level exercise in which the
WFX training audience is not a joint level headquarters allows
deliberate shaping of the virtual battle environment in order to create
what we have traditionally considered WFX rigor. This would require much
less contrivance, as opposing ground forces could reasonably be expected
to gain local tactical superiority from time to time.

Another approach would be to rationalize training objectives more
rigorously for joint level exercises. This approach would prioritize the
training value for the joint level headquarters and provide clear
priorities for the training experiences of the secondary training
audiences (the Services). A well-written scenario and effective exercise
design could provide a rigorous training experience for any component,
but such a design requires acknowledging that not every component can
have the first priority. For example, in one year, in a given exercise,
we would give the higher training priority to the land component as the
supported command, with the air and maritime components as the
supporting commands. The following year, or in another exercise, the
training priority can be different. It is not an issue of which
component is more important but rather of getting the best training
experience for all the components and recognizing that we probably
cannot accomplish all of that in a single exercise. From a systems
perspective, it is merely recognizing that in order to optimize the
entire system, we may have to accept suboptimization of a system
component, at least from that component's perspective.

Yet another approach would exercise a joint force through all the
phases of an entire campaign: deter/engage, seize the initiative,
decisive operations, and transition. (5) This approach is seldom if ever
seen because it takes so long to develop the campaign and its outcomes.
However, by linking a series of exercises, such an approach would be
possible. Service training experience priorities can be built into the
different phases of the campaign that run through and link the series of
exercise events. This would allow the JTF headquarters to experience the
challenges of not only integrating the component capabilities but also
allowing the headquarters to experience the challenge of planning and
executing the transitions between phases and shifting supported and
supporting command relationships. A natural byproduct of this design
would be to allow each of the Services to experience supported and
supporting command responsibilities and to experience the kind of
training rigor each desires.

Joint training exercises create a Service training dilemma: good
joint level training does not necessarily provide a good component
training experience. This is not an unsolvable problem, but it will
require a systems view of the joint and Service training experience. A
single exercise cannot be all things to all components. Rather, to
provide good joint and operational level training experience, individual
components may find their experience suboptimized in any given exercise.
With a long-term approach to exercise planning, however, everyone (the
JTF headquarters and the individual Services) can experience the kind of
training rigor they desire. They simply cannot all experience it at the
same time or in every exercise. Overall systems optimization will most
likely require suboptimization in order to put everyone through the
desired level of rigor over time.

NOTES

(1) Carl von Clausewitz, On War (London: Penguin Books, 1982).

(2) Charles R. Anderson, Guadalcanal--The U.S. Army Campaigns of
World War II (Washington, DC: Center for Military History, 1989),
available at <www.army.mil/cmh-pg/brochures/72-8/72-8.htm>.

(3) Rick Atkinson, Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf
War (New York: Houghton-Mifflin, 1993).